


Music (Day 3 of TSEWeek2020)

by flyingfalconflower12



Series: TSE Appreciation Week 2020 [3]
Category: The Silver Eye (Webcomic)
Genre: (but they don't know it yet, Concerts, F/M, Half-Siblings, I guess), Magic, Music, Parent-Child Relationship, Seizures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:47:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25596001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingfalconflower12/pseuds/flyingfalconflower12
Summary: Delaney plays her first harp recital for her family.  It... well, it doesn't really go as planned.Written for Day 3 of TSE Appreciation Week 2020!  I picked Theme 1 :)
Relationships: Bhatair Hollingsworth | Velvare Bamidele/Gudrun Terpsi, Bhatair Hollingsworth/Gudrun Terpsi, Ezra Damir/Delaney Hollingsworth, Thoth St. Claire/Gudrun Terpsi, Velvare Bamidele/Gudrun Terpsi
Series: TSE Appreciation Week 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1852564
Comments: 7
Kudos: 3





	Music (Day 3 of TSEWeek2020)

Delaney sits down on her chair, taking a deep breath. Her father is sitting in the first row of seats in the nearly-empty auditorium, next to her mother and Nathan. And Ezra, of course.

She steels herself, pushing back her skirt and tucking her long red hair behind her ear. It's her first performance since she's learned to play the harp, and she intends to do it well.

Placing her calloused fingers gently on the strings, Delaney takes a moment to close her eyes. "Should I go?" she asks quietly, her voice shaking. She wills herself to sit still, opening her eyes to look at her audience.

Her father is smiling at her, his hands neatly folded in his lap, his posture at the ready. "We're ready whenever you are," he assures her.

"Okay." Delaney straightens her back, smiling softly. _I've got this._

The first note plays in her head, and she plucks it, and then the next, and then the next. Soon enough, the soft music is carrying her away, and Delaney can feel the weight of all her worry lifting slowly off of her shoulders. Her smile grows wider and her playing gets faster as she channels her triumph into her fingertips and the volume surges. Her gaze drifts to her little crowd of onlookers, and she can't help but feel even happier.

Bhatair is sitting back, moving his head slowly back and forth to the music; Gudrun's eyes are closed and she's beaming; Nathan is moving his hands and nodding along as if he's the conductor; Ezra is leaning in and grinning widely at Delaney. She turns her head back to her instrument, satisfied, concentrating hard on the most complicated part of the piece. Her fingers move faster and her tongue sticks out of the corner of her mouth as she narrows her eyes and focuses on the strings of her harp.

Someone gives a strangled-sounding gasp from in front of the stage. Delaney tries not to let it break her focus, thinking it's just Gudrun being theatrical, but just after there's a _thud_ and Delaney's head shoots up to see Nathan having a seizure on the floor, his chair toppled over next to him. Gudrun is cradling his head and Bhatair is kneeling by, looking extremely worried. Gudrun looks up at Ezra, her blue eyes wide. "Get help!" she cries. "Get... get a doctor! Please!"

He dashes off and Delaney is left there, alone on stage, while her parents are in hysterics on the floor around her unconscious, convulsing older brother. Nathan's movement slowly begins to stop and his eyes get less glazed as he lies there, disoriented, breathing heavily and looking around the room. He falls back down and Gudrun pulls him up into her arms, crying, and Bhatair envelopes both of them into his embrace, whispering calming words into his wife's ear.

Delaney, her fingers still on the harp, is still silent, still stunned, and still utterly alone.

She looks away for a moment, trying to ground herself again, return to the feeling that had risen inside her when she was playing her harp, but her mother's sobs and her father's whispers and her brother's panting all ring in her head and reverberate around inside her skull and she has to squeeze her eyes tightly shut in order to tune them out. Ezra runs back into the room, trailed by a doctor, and Delaney completely loses her focus, leaning her head in her hands. She must look insane, or insanely emotional, she figures, because Ezra turns to her father and quietly offers to take her upstairs.

He takes her arm and pulls her up out of her chair, and she leans on his shoulder as they walk out of the room. "He's going to be okay," says Ezra. "It's just a seizure. They can be caused by anything."

Delaney just nods. She realizes she's shaking, a little, and Ezra hugs her tighter. She's still young but somehow she understands that this isn't normal, this is bad, this is something that her parents know more about than she does.

The harp music is still playing softly in the back of her mind, and she shivers. Maybe she shouldn't have started her little concert at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Bhatair may or may not be Thoth in this fic; it's completely up to your interpretation and I'm not sure which one I want to go for; that's why I tagged both.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! Delaney might be one of my favorite TSE characters, behind Avidan and possibly Ruya, lol. (Probably because my hopeless bisexual heart has crushes on all of them.) Don't forget to leave comments and kudos if you appreciated this fic! <3


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